Tag Archives: insects

The theme for summer camp last week at work was The Secret Lives of Bugs. We spent five days cruising around garden properties looking for bugs and other beasts. The kids had a great time and I managed a few pics of some of our finds along the way. Here are just a few of the wonderful creatures we discovered…

A long-horned beetle brought to us one morning by one of the staff (click photos to enlarge)

Campers learned about all sorts of “bugs”, including ones that had more than 6 legs like this isopod

The most common dragonfly at the Garden, the blue dasher

One of my favorite bugs, a spicebush swallowtail caterpillar, still in its bird poop mimic stage

Eight-spotted forester moth larva

One of the campers spotted this newly emerged oakworm moth (the wings are not yet pumped out to their full adult size)

Assassin bug nymph

One of the highlights of the week was a visit to a honeybee hive at the Carolina Campus Community Garden

A male honeybee with a varroa mite (that brown oval) on its thorax. These introduced mites are a major pest of honeybees.

We also learned about native bees from an NCSU entomologist. She brought a live bumblebee nest (above) and a drone box, where kids could let male bumblebees (drones) crawl on them (male bees lack stingers).

Mating tiger bee flies. These large flies are parasites on the nests of carpenter bees.

A signal fly earns its name from its behavior of waving its patterned wings back and forth as it walks, as though giving signals

It has been a hectic few weeks at work with summer camp. One good thing is I am out in the Garden daily, and, anytime you are out in a place with that much diversity, there are plenty of things to see. I managed to take the camera out a few days before and after camp, and found some interesting subjects. Here are a few of the recent highlights…

The mummy-like pupa of a walnut sphinx moth (the antennae of the future moth can be seen outlined in the pupa as they curl down from the top into a point just above my finger)

Snowy tree cricket (Oecanthus fultoni), male – this is the so-called thermometer cricket. The frequency of the chirps made by this species (made by the males as they rub their wings together) is considered a fairly reliable estimate of the air temperature. In the Eastern U.S., Fahrenheit temperature can be estimated by counting the chirps in 13 sec. and adding 40.

Yellow jackets dispatch a pink-striped oakworm to feed to their larvae

One of the many bunnies that reside at the Garden (quite happily, I presume)

This caterpillar practices deceit with its back end looking like a front end

The beautiful and wildlife-friendly berries of a sassafras tree

A handsome trig (also called a red-headed bush cricket). This one is a male. The handsome part is self-evident; the trig part refers to the family Trigonidiinae, or Winged Bush Crickets.

Handsome trig nymph (wings are still developing)

Dogbane leaf beetle, an iridescent beauty

A very pointy-headed planthopper (Rhyncomitra microrhina) that we caught while sweep-netting

Dorsal view of same planthopper

All is well that ends well…the rear end of a tuliptree silk moth caterpillar. Eggs were laid by a female on 5/18/17, hatched on 5/30; caterpillars had all pupated by 6/29; first adult moth of this summer’s second generation emerged on 7/20. This new generation will overwinter as pupae.